المملكة المتحدة لبريطانيا العظمى وأيرلندا الشماليةExecutive Summary
1 Serious and organised crime affects more UK citizens, more often, than any other national security threat and leads to more deaths in the UK each year than all other national security threats combined. It costs the UK at least £37 billion annually. It has a corrosive impact on our public services, communities, reputation and way of life. Crime is now lower than it was in 2010, although we are also aware that since 2014 there have been genuine increases in some low volume, high harm offences. The National Crime Agency (NCA) assesses that the threat from serious and organised crime is increasing and serious and organised criminals are continually looking for ways to sexually or otherwise exploit new victims and novel methods to make money, particularly online.
2 A large amount of serious and organised crime remains hidden or underreported, meaning the true scale is likely to be greater than we currently know. Although the impact may often be difficult to see, the threat is real and occurs every day all around us. Serious and organised criminals prey on the most vulnerable in society, including young children, and their abuse can have a devastating, life-long effect on their victims. They target members of the public to defraud, manipulate and exploit them, sell them deadly substances and steal their personal data in ruthless pursuit of profit. They use intimidation to create fear within our communities and to undermine the legitimacy of the state. Enabled by their lawyers and accountants, corrupt elites and criminals set up fake companies to help them to hide their profits, fund lavish lifestyles and invest in further criminality.
3 Serious and organised crime knows no borders, and many offenders operate as part of large networks spanning multiple countries. Technological change allows criminals to share indecent images of children, sell drugs and hack into national infrastructure more easily from all around the world, while communicating more quickly and securely through encrypted phones. Continuously evolving technology has meant that exploitation of children online is becoming easier and more extreme, from live-streaming of abuse to grooming through social media and other sites. Serious and organised criminals also exploit vulnerabilities in the increasing number of global trade and transport routes to smuggle drugs, firearms and people. They have learnt to become more adaptable, resilient and networked. Some think of themselves as untouchable.
4 In some countries overseas, criminals have created safe havens where serious and organised crime, corruption and the state are interlinked and self-serving. This creates instability and undermines the reach of the law, hindering our ability to protect ourselves from other national security threats such as terrorism and hostile state activity. Corruption, in particular, hinders the UK’s ability to help the world’s poorest people, reduce poverty and promote global prosperity.
Our response
5 Despite significant progress, the scale of the challenge we face is stark and we have therefore revised our approach. Our aim is to protect our citizens and our prosperity by leaving no safe space for serious and organised criminals to operate against us within the UK and overseas, online and of offline. This strategy sets out how we will mobilise the full force of the state, aligning our collective efforts to target and disrupt serious and organised criminals. We will equip the whole of government, the private sector, communities and individual citizens to play their part in a single collective endeavour to rid our society of the harms of serious and organised crime, whether they be child sexual exploitation and abuse, the harm caused by drugs and rearms, or the day to day corrosive effects on communities across the country. We will pursue offenders through prosecution and disruption, bringing all of our collective powers and tools to bear. We will: prevent people from engaging in serious and organised crime; protect victims, organisations and systems from its harms; and prepare for when it occurs, mitigating the impact. We will strengthen our global reach to confront the threat before it comes to our shores.
6 This strategy provides a framework and outlines a set of capabilities which are designed to respond to the full range of serious and organised crime threats. We have four overarching objectives to achieve our aim:
Relentless disruption and targeted action against the highest harm serious and organised criminals and networks
We will target our capabilities on criminals exploiting vulnerable people, including the most determined and prolific child sex offenders and we will proactively target, pursue and dismantle the highest harm networks affecting the UK. We will use new and improved powers and capabilities to identify, freeze, seize or otherwise deny criminals access to their finances, assets and infrastructure, at home and overseas including Unexplained Wealth Orders and Serious Crime Prevention Orders. At the heart of this approach will be new data, intelligence and assessment capabilities which will allow the government, in particular the NCA, to penetrate and better understand serious and organised criminals and their vulnerabilities more effectively and target our disruptions to greater effect.
Building the highest levels of defence and resilience in vulnerable people, communities, businesses and systems
We will remove vulnerabilities in our systems and organisations, giving criminals fewer opportunities to target and exploit. We will ensure our citizens better recognise the techniques of criminals and take steps to protect themselves. This includes working to build strong communities that are better prepared for and more resilient to the threat, and less tolerant of illegal activity. We will also identify those who are harmed faster and support them to a consistently high standard.
Stopping the problem at source, identifying and supporting those at risk of engaging in criminality
We will develop and use preventative methods and education to divert more young people from a life of serious and organised crime and reduce reoffending. We will use the government’s full reach overseas to tackle the drivers of serious and organised crime.
Establishing a single, whole-system approach
At the local, regional, national and international levels, we will align our collective efforts to respond as a single system. We will improve governance, tasking and coordination to ensure our response brings all our levers and tools to bear effectively against the highest harm criminals and networks. We will expand our global reach and influence, increasing our overseas network of experts to ensure the UK’s political, security, law enforcement, diplomatic, development, defence relationships and financial levers are used in a more coordinated and intensive manner. And we will work to integrate with the private sector, pooling our skills, expertise and collective resources, co-designing new joint capabilities, and designing out vulnerabilities together.
7 As a result, we will be able to measure and demonstrate that:
a) We have significantly raised the risk of operating for the highest harm criminals and networks within the UK and overseas, online and of offline, by ensuring:
new data and intelligence capabilities have targeted and disrupted serious and organised criminals and networks in new ways;
a range of partnerships and working practices are embedded in the UK that enable us to sharpen and accelerate our response;
overseas partners are working with us more often, more collaboratively and more effectively to target serious and organised crime affecting the UK; and
we are arresting and prosecuting the key serious and organised criminals, stopping their abuse, denying and recovering from them their money and assets, dismantling their networks and breaking their business model.
b) Communities, individuals and organisations are reporting they are better protected and better able to protect themselves; and victims are better supported to recover from their abuse or exploitation.
c) Fewer young people are engaging in criminal activity or reoffending.
